Take Tom Malone’s word for it. Malone teaches at the Sloan School of Management and founded the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT. He and his colleague Anita Williams Wooley conducted a study that both measures and predicts collective intelligence in teams called “Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups.”

In a nutshell, individual intelligence (IQ) is only moderately correlated to collective team intelligence. Having a team of smart people doesn’t necessarily make for a smart team.

I know you know this.

It’s nice to have a little evidence, though, right? A little something you can whip out the next time that one boss says (again) “Those guys are smart. Just put ‘em in a room together and they’ll work it out.”

Malone and Wooley found that the following elements correlate strongly with intelligent teams:

more people with strong social sensitivity,

an even distribution of discussion,

there’s no gentle way to say this… a higher percentage of women (women tend to score higher in social sensitivity).

Next time that brilliant but intellectually dominating, socially clueless person takes over the meeting, you can tell them to zip it.